2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed preview

Highlights of this June's Festival of Speed will include rally legend
Sebastien Loeb attempting to break Goodwood's hillclimb record

Sebastien Loeb will drive the Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peaks car up the hill in an attempt to break the course record

By Nick Gibbs

1:27PM GMT 20 Mar 2014

Rallying’s most successful driver ever Sebastien Loeb will attempt to break the 15-year record for the fastest drive up Goodwood’s hill-climb at this year’s Festival of Speed, the organisers have announced.

Loeb’s attempt in Peugeot’s mighty 208 T16 Pikes Peak car to crack Nick Heidfeld’s 1999 record is one of many motoring highlights revealed for this year’s festival at the end of June, which this year will star Mercedes as the featured manufacturer.

The German maker’s motorsport successes will be celebrated by the now-famous central sculpture outside host Lord March’s house, promised to be “the most architecturally challenging and spectacular installation ever seen” at the event, according to the organisers.

Mercedes cars featured at the gathering will include pre-war, race-winning Silver Arrows machines, as well as the Sauber-Mercedes C9 andCLK GTR sportscars of the Eighties and Nineties. Mercedes F1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are also said to be attending the event.

Highlights of the four-day motoring extravaganza, which again will kick off with the popular Moving Motor Show on the Thursday, includes a blast up the hill by former F1 champion Emerson Fittipaldi behind the wheel of the McLaren M23 car from his 1974 championship-winning season.

Another F1 champ, John Surtees, will have the 50th anniversary of his championship season celebrated with a drive of 11 cars and three motorcycles from his long career, including his championship-winning Ferrari from 1964.

This year’s Festival of Speed held on June 26-29 falls a week ahead of the British Grand Prix and two weeks after the Le Mans 24 hours. Fresh from that endurance race will be Toyota’s TS040 hybrid LMP1 cars, while Porsche’s Mark Webber will be attending after battling the Toyotas and the dominant Audis in his new LMP1 machine. The most successful Le Mans driver of all, Dane Tom Kristensen, will also be driving a variety of cars up the hill.

From Le Mans of old comes one of the most famous cars in motorsport history, Bentley’s ‘Old Number 1’ that triumphed at the event in 1929 and 1930 with Woolf Barnato and Henry ‘Tim’ Birkin at the wheel.

Looking into the future, one of the most hotly anticipated supercars will take a bow at Goodwood when a prototype of the next Honda NSX makes its global dynamic debut at the event. The hybrid all-wheel-drive car isn’t due to be launched until next year, but here joins a classic 1989 NSX once driven by Aryton Senna for a drive up the hill.

This year we’ll see more supercars pushed to their limit on the hillclimb with the aim of setting fastest times and outdoing rivals. Meanwhile famous rally cars will be back in action in the forest stage.

Tickets start at £27 for admission to Thursday’s Moving Motor Show, with Friday admission tickets at £46 and tickets for either Saturday or Sunday costing £60 each. Children under 12 are free, while tickets for those aged between 13-21 are half price. Tickets are available here.